“There’s certainly talk of arming robots with tasers,” Sharkey told the Alex Jones Show, adding, “but tasers are kind of deadly – 150 people died in the U.S. within a period of two years from taser abuse, so if you start arming robots with tasers then I think it’s only a short step to arming them with lethal weapons.”

Sharkey said that his organization had enjoyed recent success at the United Nations with French and American delegations in moving to prohibit armed autonomous robots by putting forward the issue as a mandate for discussion at the UN.

“There was a massive discussion and they accepted the mandate so next year the CCW committee (Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) are setting up an expert workshop to take this on board and discuss it,” said Sharkey.

Sharkey has predicted that within the next 30 years, “Humanoid walking robots would be more in use for crowd control at games, strikes and riots. Robots will patrol city centres and trouble spots where fights are likely to break out.”

The professor sees the drones being used to run checkpoints, check IDs and make arrests with the aid of “non-lethal” weapons.

DARPA has already announced the creation of a robotic drone that looks human, with the construction of PETMAN by Boston Dynamics. Sharkey described the DARPA robots as “an incredible technical achievement, but it’s unfortunate that it’s going to be used to kill people.”

In a 50-page report published last year, Human Rights Watch also warned that artificially intelligent robots let loose on the battlefield would inevitably commit war crimes.